This year’s political party conference season was hyped up as one of the most interesting in years – and it really was. The Tories were meeting as the party of government for the first time since 1996; the Lib Dems have a share of power for the first time in an age. Labour, meanwhile, had to elect a leader and decide its post-Blair and Brown direction. During the three conferences, I made nine films – an attempt to capture not only the big debates around the standard issues, but also to delve into what was really eating away at both activists and members of the public, well away from the main conference halls and set speeches.

For years ignored or patronised, the Lib Dems were this year subject to protests from a coalition of trade unionists, political activists, students and others opposed to their coalition with the Tories and the planned public spending cuts.

I visited the bellwether Liverpudlian ward of Picton to speak to the people there about their views of the Lib Dems six months into the coalition, as well as Ian Jobling, a councillor elected as a Lib Dem who has since defected to Labour.

In an attempt to get to grips with “middle England”, I visited the affluent suburb of Altrincham to speak to people struggling to earn a living, but also desperate to live a life beyond the bottom line, and I put their views to the new Labour leader, who had some very interesting things to say.

In asking Conservative conference delegates and politicians whether the cuts where out of ideology or necessity, I kept on being returned to Cameron’s big idea – but even its evangelists admit it is very much in its infancy.

I visited two starkly different areas of Birmingham – Edgbaston and Newtown – to talk to people about the government’s proposed welfare reforms, only to collide with some uncomfortable truths about the state of Britain and our lack of solidarity.